El vs. subway, rather than Sox vs. Yanks. What next? Pizza wars!

The New York Yankees made their annual trip to Chicago’s South Side last week, where they wound up splitting their four-game series against the White Sox. When combined with the two of three games the Yankees won earlier this season in New York, it makes for a 3-4 record the White Sox have for 2017.
 

Rahm smirk sell more papers than Christie carcass?

Not exactly an overpowering by the Bronx Bombers over our Sout’ Side Hit Men.

SO PERHAPS THAT was a factor that caused Noo Yawk types to get all worked up this week in their desire to take pot shots at Chicago; specifically, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the mass transit system we affectionately refer to as the “el.”

For it seems that on Monday, the New York Times published a commentary written by our mayor that took the attitude there were things that mass transit officials in New York could learn from Chicago.

It ran under the headline, In Chicago, the Trains Actually Run on Time and offered up a statistic that claimed 85 percent of us are satisfied with the way our trains and buses operate. Keep your Mussolini gag to yourself; Chicago trains and buses are fairly reliable and that is important for a mayor.

It also had Rahm saying the reason Chicago’s system isn’t confronted with the problems New York faces (Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week declared a state of emergency for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) is because our officials emphasize “reliability ahead of expansion.”

IMPLYING THAT NEW York, which has the largest mass transit system in the nation (Chicago is second) has grown wild and out-of-control.

Yanks didn't administer Chgo beat-down, so other issues must occur

Of course, there were those greatly offended that a rube from outside of New York (actually, outside of Manhattan) would dare to know better about anything, That provoked the New York Daily News on Tuesday (a.k.a., Independence Day) to put Rahm on the front page of the paper.

A quarter century later, and CTA still going strong

The Daily News could have gone with front page photos of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s carcass sitting on a lawn chair on the public beach he had ordered closed to the public. But they thought Emanuel would sell more papers, running under the headline Dumb Track Mind and also reminding people, “AT LEAST our riders don’t get SHOT on the way home!”

Which means if there’s really a sense of cosmic justice or bad karma, there will be a shooting incident on board a subway car somewhere in the Bronx.

NOT THAT I’M hoping for such an incident. But for a newspaper that contends its provocative front page layouts are intended to sell papers for people who make an impulse purchase while walking by a newsstand or news box, I just can’t see where Rahm’s goofy smirk really does much to inspire New York news interest.

Besides, for all the things that people can complain about Chicago, one has to admit that our mass transit system does work fairly well – particularly when one considers how old it is.

Some 125 years, with parts of it dating back a century. The basic concept in moving large numbers of people around various parts of Chicago isn’t that radically different than the days when Al Capone was a living, breathing human being in these parts.

It also is one of the things I miss about life in the city proper, and why on those occasions when I return to Chicago proper I make a point of relying upon mass transit to move about.

ANYBODY WHO SERIOUSLY pays $35-40 to park their car for an hour or so in downtown Chicago is a fool. Our mass transit is one of the things our beloved Second City is doing right!

For what it’s worth, my guess is that this outburst (which Emanuel himself is managing to laugh off) is just the usual New York vs. Chicago rivalry; a holdover from when they really were the two largest cities in the country and where Chicago maintains a significance regardless of how much larger Los Angeles may ever become.

A hefty meal, and not junk food

Perhaps if the Yankees could have swept the four-game series against the White Sox, the need to dump on Chicago over mass transit might have been reduced.

Then again, we’ll always have pizza to quarrel over – particularly with those individuals who seriously look at those flimsy slices sold in Brooklyn and can’t see the superiority of something from Uno’s or Lou Malnati’s.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: As for the Daily News claim that Chicago is the "murder capital," these days St. Louis has the highest homicide rate in the nation, with some 60.37 slayings per 100,000 people compared to 18.6 for Chicago (and 7 for New York).

Rival states take their pot-shots at Illinois, Land of Lincoln fights back!!!

It’s not at all odd to see the states of the Great Lakes region compete amongst each other to gain some sort of edge in the public eye – I’m old enough to remember those “Gov. Thompson (as in Tommy, not Jim) Welcomes You to Wisconsin” signs that used to greet people driving north on Interstate 94 out of Illinois.

We don't always play nice w/ each other

Or all those “Illinoyed” billboards that Indiana used as part of a state campaign to try to encourage businesses to relocate to the Hoosier state.

IT WORKED IN terms of drawing some small companies across the border – to parts where they’d still be close to Illinois and the Chicago metro area, which was the source of their real business.

But it never managed to draw anything huge away from Illinois – after all, no matter what the lower tax rates would be, you’d still be in Indiana. “You get what you pay for” is the rule that ought to apply here.

The point of this recollection is that it’s not new for the Midwestern states bound together by their proximity to Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes to see each other as rivals.

So perhaps it shouldn’t be odd to learn that the Whole Foods chain of high-scale supermarkets is making a move of its distribution center that provides goods to their Chicago-area stores.

THAT DISTRIBUTION CENTER had been located in Munster, Ind. – a municipality located right on the Illinois/Indiana border across from suburban Lansing.

EMANUEL: A late Valentine's Day gift?

It’s now moving to the Pullman neighborhood in Chicago proper – a site that offers one major asset that Munster could never have competed with. The Pullman neighborhood is right on the Bishop Ford Freeway, which leads into the Dan Ryan Expressway.

In fact, the site of the new center to open in 2018 will be right on the freeway. It will be easy for Whole Foods trucks to hop right onto the highway, then go anywhere in the Chicago metro area to make deliveries of goods to be sold in their supermarkets. As opposed to now, where those trucks have to fight their way through the traffic mess that often is the Borman Expressway (we really do need the Illiana to be built) before they can get into Chicago.

There may have been some sort of tax break that Munster could have offered through the fact that Indiana does hit its businesses with lesser rates. But they also can’t offer the amenities that a Chicago or Illinois can. You pay more, but you also get more.

Strengthening Midwest presence with Chicago

I’LL ADMIT IT probably was a bit cold for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be seen snickering and to refer to the move as a “late Valentine’s Day (gift) to Indiana,” but it certainly wasn’t any more colder than the trash talk that the surrounding states usually spew – often by trying to portray Chicago as some sort of hellhole that draws everything down.

Which, to me, often sounds like the petty whining of places that realize they can never match Chicago’s many amenities.

Now I don’t mean this as an Indiana-bashing session. Heck, I do work for one of the daily newspapers in Northwest Indiana and often spend time in Gary itself. Which for the record is a place that has so much potential, but can’t seem to get itself together for so many reasons – many of which are beyond its control.

There are times when I think Lake County and the surrounding areas of Northwest Indiana ought to just de-annex from the land of Hoosiers and become a part of Illinois. Maybe our people could make Gary succeed – rather than the Indiana officials who, at times, seem obsessed with the idea of holding that city down.

Could we do better with it?

BUT IT’S NOT likely there will be any shift any time soon of the Illinois/Indiana border from its current location between Chicago and Hammond to some place east of Valparaiso.

But our state may have accomplished something greater for the public image. For it seems the advertising professional who created that “Illinoyed” campaign for Indiana state government now works for Illinois.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported the newly-created Illinois Business and Development Corp. hired Kelly Nicholl – who as it turns out never gave up her condominium in downtown Chicago, even while working out of Indianapolis.

Illinoyed no more?

Perhaps even she couldn’t bear the thought of being too close to the rest of Indiana, which will now be the target of Illinois’ attacks!

 

  -30-

EDITORS NOTE: For those of you who'd like to read the Hoosier perspective, WBEZ-FM's Northwest Indiana correspondent provides a comprehensive report.

You know it’s a dead season when a “No. 14” is the “City Series” highlight

This year doesn't come close to matching '06

It was kind of cutesy to learn that the Chicago Cubs felt compelled to pay tribute to Paul Konerko this week – what with him expected to retire from playing professional baseball after the end of this season.

Honored in home of Cubs' No. 14

It’s nothing on the scale of what New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is getting from every ball club the Yankees play against this season.

BUT SEEING THE Cubs put aside the natural, century-old rivalry between Sout’ Side and North, Sox and Cubs, to acknowledge that Konerko has been a significant figure in the history of Chicago baseball was nice.

I even got a kick out of the “gift” the Cubs gave Tuesday to Konerko – one of the number cards used in their allegedly-quaint hand-operated scoreboard. Specifically, a number “14” – to match up with the uniform number Konerko wore during his 16 years with the White Sox.

It’s not like this year’s version of the Cubs is ever likely to score 14 runs in any given inning; although I suppose it is possible that Cubs pitching will have several instances in which they will give up that many runs per inning.

Konerko retirement cycle not on same scale

I guess the Cubs will just have to ensure that high-scoring rallies by the opposition go to at least 15 runs at a time.

THAT MOMENT ALSO appears to be the highlight of the “Crosstown Classic” between our city’s two ball clubs; even though I still think that label sounds lame and I prefer to think of it as the “City Series” – which technically hasn’t been played since the Second World War.

Much has been written already about the level of apathy expressed by fans toward this year’s four-game version of the series.

A mediocre White Sox team, combined with a truly dreadful Cubs ball club, doesn’t exactly make for a must-see series – particularly since the current ways in which Major League Baseball operates has turned the series into just another set of games (all won by the White Sox, thus far) over the course of the 162-game season both ball clubs will play.

Dull series another reason to bring back Ozzie?

We’re still early enough in the season that the standings don’t mean much. Memorial Day is the date on which we can start to see how well a team is truly playing – there just haven’t been enough games thus far.

SO I WASN’T at any of the games at Wrigley Field (although it has been a decade since I have set foot in that ball park – which I remember because the Cubs lost to the Montreal Expos; who ceased to exist after ’04).

Nor did I feel the need to show up at U.S. Cellular Field Wednesday (although that was quite a catch by shortstop Alexi Ramirez to create that 9th inning double play). Nor will I likely be there Thursday night for the final game between the two until 2015 (because I really don’t see the scenario in which both Chicago ball clubs manage to make it to the playoffs, win their respective league pennants, and wind up playing in the World Series).

I care enough about what happened that I did take the time to look up the box scores. But I have been doing that all season, and would have done so regardless of whom each team was playing.

This series just isn’t intriguing enough now – this is one of the off-years that are bound to come. The kind that test how committed one is to following a ball club.

Remember '98

WE DON’T HAVE Ozzie Guillen going around talking about how rat-infested Wrigley Field was (one of the drawbacks, that and those troughs, of being 100 years old). Nor do we have A.J. Pierzynski trying to rile up the crowd after getting slugged by Michael Barrett following a home plate collision.

We don’t even have shortstop Mike Caruso achieving the highlight of his miniscule major league career during a city series.

We just get to “Wait ‘til Next Year” in terms of a White Sox/Cubs series that is on-field interesting – a concept that we are way too familiar with in this city.

  -30-

Illiana? Not when it comes to smoking

It never fails to amaze me how dissimilar the political mentalities are between Illinois and Indiana – considering that in so many ways the two states ought to be among the most similar in the United States.

DeLUCA: Won't ban bacon double cheeseburger



But then, all we have to do is take into account the concept of banning the smoking of tobacco products in public places and we’ll see that State Line Road really has become a barrier as rigid as those walls that the conservative ideologues dream of erecting at the U.S./Mexico border.

THE ISSUE CAME up this week at both of the Statehouses (Springfield and Indianapolis), but with ridiculously differing results.

Here in Illinois, the state laws that restrict cigarette smoking in public places were enacted a few years ago.

Which led to an effort that came up for a vote on Tuesday on a bill that would create a new kind of state-issued license – one by which taverns could apply for if they wish to permit smoking in their establishments.

Which would mean the state would be able to regulate where people could smoke. It also would allow those taverns who are so desperate to have smokers (rather than people who would prefer not to inhale the exhaust from tobacco products) to be able to accommodate those customers.

THE MEASURE ACTUALLY made it through a legislative committee before getting shot down by an overwhelming vote (82 to 30) by the Illinois House of Representatives.

Critics called the measure a way to try to chip chunks out of the smoking ban that was enacted in Illinois to look out for the health concerns not only of the public, but also of the people who are employed in such taverns and would be subjected to breathing in cigarette smoke while working.

BROWN: Bill shredded like burger

Although it strikes me as ironic that the legislator who sponsored this particular measure is state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Chicago Heights, whose legislative district includes such suburbs as Lynwood and Sauk Village – the Cook County towns that border up against Indiana.

Perhaps it is the intermingling of Illinoisans and Hoosiers that takes place on a daily basis at the southeastern corner of the Chicago area that causes an Indiana-style bill to get introduced into the Illinois political mix.

EVEN DELUCA’S DEFENSE that this is supposedly a matter of personal choice to smoke (which ignores the personal choice of those who don’t want to be subjected to the smoke) sounds Hoosier-ish – although I’m sure some will think his sarcastic line in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the next ban being on the “bacon double cheeseburger” is clever.

We may even have people at the Statehouse in Indianapolis thinking similar thoughts these days, as the issue is being considered there – as well.

Only in Indiana, the political pundits are claiming that state Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, is somehow tainted by his proximity to Chicago and Illinois. Brown has been the leading proponent for Indiana enacting something resembling a public smoking ban, and it was his bill earlier this week that got chopped up into hamburger (perhaps for those bacon double cheeseburgers).

For his bill got significantly amended by the Indiana state Senate, which was expected to approve their weakened version. Proponents of a ban are hopeful that a legislative committee can reconcile it with an Indiana House version and come up with something tougher.

BUT AS AMENDED, Indiana would ban smoking in public – EXCEPT in taverns, charity gambling sites, nursing homes, veterans homes, retirement centers, group homes and mental health facilities.

When one considers that the Indiana version of a ban already exempted places like riverboat casinos, cigar and hookah bars, tobacco shops and private clubs, the real mystery will be to figure out just where an Indiana smoking ban would actually apply.

And yes, Indiana officials also voted to approve a measure making it clear that local governments do NOT have the authority to impose stricter laws within their own municipal boundaries.

It will be interesting to see how this issue is resolved in Indiana by the time the state Legislature is through with it for this year. For it seems that tobacco rules on the east side of State Line Road.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if we could get an exodus of Hoosiers wishing to look out for their health – similar to those small businesses near the border that have moved into Indiana so they could get away with paying a couple of percentage points less in taxes to the state.

I’d say that would be a good trade, since if all the smokers were congregated in Indiana, their long-term health prognosis would be such that they’d wither away in numbers.

Although on a more serious note, I should say that the people who are most eager for their legal right to smoke in public remind me too much of the childhood bullies who terrorized the schoolyard to get their way. Now, they’ve got some money to afford a pack-or-two habit that they think they have some legal right to inflict on the rest of us.

Which makes me all the more glad I live to the west of State Line Road.

  -30-

Cubs at Cell? – It’s going to happen, no matter how much some squirm

Thus far, it has just been the rumor mill working overtime. All the players in this particular scheme are denying there is any truth to it.

Yet let’s be realistic. “It” is going to happen at some point in the next few years.



Will the statues of legendary White Sox ballplayers look more athletic than the stiffs playing for the Cubs, should that team need to use U.S. Cellular Field as an interim home in the near future?



THE “IT” IN this case being the idea that the Chicago Cubs will wind up playing “home” games at U.S. Cellular Field – the Sout’ Side stadium of the Chicago White Sox, who play a large role in unifying the neighborhoods of the South Side into one entity.

People on all sides of the Chicago baseball fan schematic are complaining about this one.

Cubs fans are either snobbish, or sissyish, or just downright stupid in thinking they don’t want to go south of Roosevelt Road to see their ballclub of choice play – even if it is just for a season or so while the 98-year-old Wrigley Field gets a substantial renovation that would enable it to remain in heavy use for another few decades.

White Sox fans are being equally arrogant, or short-sighted, or just downright dumb, in thinking that the Cubs can play somewhere else. Some fans seem to think the Cubs should have to move to Milwaukee for a season if they really need to play elsewhere while the one-time Weeghman Park gets an overhaul.

NO ONE IS going to chase the Cubs out of town. Any idea that such a scheme would be feasible, or permitted by the baseball powers-that-be, is absurd.

And for those Lake View neighborhood residents who can’t bring themselves to ride a Red Line train south of the Lake Street station , all I have to say is, “Grow up!” Let’s not forget that the 1918 World Series (Boston Red Sox vs. Chicago Cubs) was NOT played at Wrigley Field, BECAUSE the Cubs played their “home” games at Comiskey Park because they thought it a superior (and larger) facility.

The Cubs once played home games here



The rumor mill got kicked into gear this week when WMAQ-TV reported about the possibility of such a move in the 2013 season – implying that the current renovation taking place now to turn the area near the right-field foul pole into a patio area with a 75-foot-wide and 7-foot-high LED board is merely the first of several that will occur.

Eventually, an overhaul to reinforce the structure (and possibly rebuild the upper deck) would take so much time that games could have to be relocated. And for what it’s worth, only a fool thinks that such work could seriously be done without moving the ballclub for a bit.

SO EVEN THOUGH the Cubs management (through P.R. people) are saying it won’t happen in 2013 (which is what the NBC-owned television station implied), it is bound to happen eventually.

The simple fact is that keeping the games within the Chicago city limits while construction takes place is going to happen. And unless somebody seriously thinks that the “good ol’ days” of baseball played in the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles was positive, you can forget about having the Cubs play in Soldier Field.

Jokes about having them play at the 5,000-seat ballpark of the brand-new Schaumburg Boomers ballclub are equally ridiculous.

So they’ll play on the South Side, just like the New York Yankees had to endure two seasons in the borough of Queens; playing at Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium underwent a significant renovation along the lines of what needs to be done at Wrigley Field to keep it structurally sound.

NOW PERSONALLY, I could care less about the Chicago Cubs. The thought of some of those over-glorified frat-boy mentality fans hanging out on the edge of Bridgeport for a Cubs game makes me a bit nauseous.

But there is the thought of what Bridgeport neighborhood people would do to them if they tried to get away with some of the tacky behavior (I’m talking public urination) that Lake View neighborhood residents who live near the ballpark have come to accept as “the way things are.”

Maybe it would be a good experience if at least some Cubs fans learned the ways of civilized society by having to watch ballgames at 35^th Street?

But as obnoxious as some Cubs fans are in saying they don’t want to see games anywhere else – even on an interim basis – the White Sox fans who “quote the contract” are even more ridiculous.

BY THAT, I mean that I am fully aware that the lease the White Sox have with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority gives them significant control over what kinds of events can be held in the building – even though state government owns it.

Nothing can even be considered within 48 hours of a scheduled White Sox game, and the ballclub gets veto power over any events at any other time of the year.

White Sox officials claim it’s about maintaining the quality of the playing field. Having two ballclubs share a field would be just too much wear-and-tear.

Nonsense!!!

FOR THE FACT is that if it means the Cubs wind up playing a season at “the Cell,” it would mean that the Cubs would get hit with the cost of maintaining the field, along with the shares of concessions and parking that the White Sox get from the events (mostly their own ballgames) held there already.



Would Cubs fans hate "the Cell" as much as Yankees fans hated this place?



Cubs money going to bolster the White Sox’ operations? I could live with that.

In fact, I can think of only one real potential for ill-will here. For it has been said that a large part of the reason why now-deceased New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner hated the cross-town New York Mets so much was that he remembered just how excessively that team bled his own financially during 1974-75 when the Yankees played in the flight paths of J.F.K. Airport.

How many White Sox fans really would have a gripe if that same situation occurred in Chicago?

  -30-

Be thankful for Da Bears – Decatur’s lone “contribution” to our society

Bill Mitchell and Adam Brown are a pair of Illinois legislators from the area around Decatur, Ill. – that central Illinois city that can account for one contribution that many in our society dearly appreciate.



If they want us to secede, why do they claim ties to our city's team?



I’m referring to the Chicago Bears. The professional football team that began its life as the company team of the A.E. Staley Co. and, after one year of existence in Decatur, came to Chicago and took on their current identity.

ASIDE FROM THAT, however, I don’t know where anyone from Decatur gets off being so snotty as to come up with a resolution for consideration by the Illinois General Assembly that would break Cook County away from Illinois and turn it into its own state.

Of course, considering that almost half of Illinois’ population resides in Cook County and is the home of many of Illinois’ greatest assets, one could make an argument that a state of Cook (or a state of Chicago, if you will) would be more significant than what is left of Illinois.

When one considers that the five surrounding counties, along with some of the extra areas on the fringe, are so tied into the Chicago area that they would find it in their advantage to become a part of the state of Chicago rather than remaining with Illinois, one wonders what these people could seriously be thinking.

If this were to ever happen (and I’ll predict now that it has a 0.000000001 percent chance of becoming reality), Illinois would find itself dropping in significance so far down that the people who pushed for this would rue the day that they ever seriously got secession talk flowing.

MITCHELL: National attention ...



BUT IT’S NOT going to happen, and the two legislators who are sponsoring this measure know full well that is the case.



This is one of those ideas that gets brought up by people who want to complain for a day or two and vent their rage – before piping down again to fight another day.

Perhaps it is the perpetual odor that emanates from the A.E. Staley plant on the edge of town (the soybeans that give Decatur its unique form of stink) that have somehow addled their judgment.



BROWN: ... of the wrong kind



Or maybe I just look down on Decatur because I know my collegiate alma mater, Bloomington-based Illinois Wesleyan University, can kick Millikin University’s collective butt (the two schools are arch-rivals) any time at anything.



BECAUSE INSTEAD OF trying to figure out how to unify the parts of Illinois and use the assets of having the most significant Midwestern U.S. city within their state’s boundaries (which is what makes Illinois a more important place than states such as Indiana, Iowa or Michigan, to name a few), they want to cut themselves off from reality. They're as ridiculous as those baseball fans who think that the key to restoring "balance" to the game is to impose restrictions on wealthy clubs so that everybody is reduced to the level of a Pittsburgh or Kansas City.

Now as one who, between college and working in the capital city, can claim to have lived in “the rest of” Illinois for 11 of the total years of my life (just under one quarter), I realize that a lot of the jokes that get told by urbanites (not Urbana-ites) about “downstate Ilinois” miss the point.

Then again, I also realize that there are some people who choose to have their lives down there because they like the sense of isolation that one can feel living in one of those places that thinks Decatur (pop. 76,122) is a Big City.

But then they resent the fact that their isolation cuts them off from influence. Chicago’s mentality has come to dominate the state because of the fact that 45 percent of the state’s people live in Cook County, and that about 65 percent of Illinoisans are Chicago-area, first and foremost.

I’D ARGUE THAT if people like Mitchell and Brown want seriously to have more influence, let them move up our way. We’d welcome them, and help them “see the light,” so to speak.

And if they decide they’d rather enjoy the benefits of their rural Illinois isolation, then I want them to pipe down and quit complaining about its drawbacks.

Because all this really does is manage to create a sense of embarrassment for our public image.

Even Green Bay, Wis., kept the NFL longer than Decatur



Seriously.

WHEN ROBIN MEADE, the one-time WMAQ-TV cutie who now anchors the CNN Headline morning newscast, spends her time on-air taking potshots at our politics (as she did Wednesday morning), then you know that a new low has been reached.

Even lower than Blagojevich (as in Milorod).

So as far as what the “Gentlemen from Macon” (as in county, the home of Decatur) think, I may actually care less than what they think of what my Chicago brethren think.

Maybe they should follow the one-time Decatur Staleys, who decided some 90 years ago that life was brighter in the Illinois metropolis on the shores of Lake Michigan.

  -30-

EXTRA: We lost to L.A.? Oh, the shame!

The Bulls will have to tell L.A. to stuff it come June

NASA is giving away its junk, and all we Chicagoans could land was a crummy simulator?



That’s the way it felt Tuesday upon learning that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is phasing out the space shuttle program, overlooked the Adler Planetarium’s willingness to display one of the shuttles by building a whole new structure to house it.

INSTEAD, THE REAL-LIFE rocket scientists decided that the three shuttles would be better housed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a branch of the Smithsonian Institute in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

It’s the latter one that bugs me, because I can see putting one of these at the Smithsonian (although why it wouldn’t be at the Air and Space Museum in the District of Columbia proper is something I don’t understand).

And Cape Canaveral, where the rockets of old actually launched from, makes sense as well.

But the Adler Planetarium really couldn’t beat out Los Angeles? Gimme a break. I could see if it was New York that somehow beat us out (New York got the prototype model  from which the real space shuttles were built).

ALL THAT THE Adler Planetarium got was the flight simulator, which the museum’s officials were spinning on Tuesday as an interesting acquisition in its own right.

After all, astronauts used the simulator to train themselves before they were allowed to set foot in the real space shuttle. But it still feels like our humble abode got the leftovers off the NASA plate.

I guess this just means we’ll have to hope for an NBA Finals this year between the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers, just so that Derrick Rose & Co. can tell the City of the Angels where they can stuff their shuttle.

And our city’s team will (hopefully) get to take the basketball hardware home come June.

  -30-

Bears vs. Packers? Eh!

They say it wasn't, but was 'Chicaco' intentional?

All around me, I have seen the signs of excitement this past week as people get all worked up over the thought of the Chicago Bears playing the Green Bay Packers for the right to play  in the Super Bowl come Feb. 6.

Yet I have to make a confession – one that may cause the more rabid among us to suggest that I can’t be a true Chicagoan. I could care less.

I’M NOT GOING to be among the people anxiously parked in front of a television set on Sunday so that I can see the game that some people are trying to claim is the biggest event in the history of Chicago sports. I’m definitely not going to be among the people who will feel it to be a significant blow to the Chicago psyche if that dinky town in Wisconsin manages to play for this year’s NFL championship against the winner of Pittsburgh Steelers/New York Jets.

Now it’s not that I have some problem with the Chicago Bears. I realize they are a long-standing, tradition-rich professional football franchise. I also appreciate that this conference championship game involves two long-standing teams with a real rivalry, and the fact that the Packers are a holdover from the days when pro football had teams in places like Canton, Ohio, and Decatur, Ill.

In short, I get why some people want to think this is the biggest Chicago sports event ever, although I personally think it’s not even the biggest Chicago sports happening of the weekend. The White Sox declaring that Ozzie Guillen will return as manager in 2012, instead of leaving him twisting in uncertainty, is more significant.

My thing is that I personally have never thought much of the game of football (the fact that I consider “soccer” to be the REAL football is a separate issue). I have twice been to games at Soldier Field. Maybe it was because I had crummy seats, but I wasn’t awed by the experience. The constant start-stop of action during a game leaves me cold.

IN FACT MY lasting memory of my first Bears game (’79 preseason against the Jets) wasn’t the score. It was the sight of the Honey Bears on the sidelines, being very appealing to my then-14-year-old warped sensibilities (along with my modern-day, 45-year-old mind).

We don’t even have the Honey Bears in Chicago any longer. So I definitely can’t see the point of paying thousands of dollars per sear to see the game (don’t even bring up the winter weather conditions that spectators will have to cope with).



Even the Chicago Sun-Times felt the need all week to get itself into "Bears-mode."



Insofar as football on television is concerned, I have a hard time concentrating on any sports broadcast – even a game in which I have a legitimate interest. Constant commercial interruptions distract me too much (I really don't understand those people who say they watch the Super Bowl for the commercials), along with all the repetitive crowd shots and close-ups meant to show us the facial pores of every single athlete on the playing field.



So I’m not eager to spend an afternoon watching television. Even if I were, I’d want to watch something more interesting than a football game that could wind up being a badly-played one.

IN FACT, I’D have to say my biggest problem is the fact that all the hype is being put on this game. The idea that this is the biggest sports event ever for a Chicago team is nonsense. We won’t know how the game ranks (or if it even comes close to qualifying) until after the game is over.

Some people are too determined to hype Sunday’s happenings, which is why I fully expect someone to get their butt whomped and the game to turn out to be a complete disappointment (I’m not saying who will be disappointed).

In fact, if there was a sports event I would have liked to have seen this weekend, it would have been my alma mater’s basketball teams from Illinois Wesleyan University, who were in Chicago Saturday night to play North Park University, that school at Foster and Kedzie avenues that a couple of decades ago was among the elite of small college basketball (three straight national championships back in 1978-80, along with two more back in ’85 and ’87 when I was a student in Bloomington).

But freelance writing commitments (a.k.a., paying work) kept me from seeing the IWU 65-57 loss to the Vikings (although the women's team beat North Park 74-54), which in my mind is much more intriguing than any overhyped NFL television broadcast.

  -30-

Trophy for bragging rights? How lame!

I used to think that the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk was just about the lamest athletic trophy in existence.

It was the token given to the winner each year of the football game played between Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. That strikes me as getting all worked up over which team finishes 10th place and which one winds up in 11th place in the Big Ten Conference.

WHOOP-DEE-DO!

Of course, we no longer have the tomahawk, which was retired a couple of years ago after more than a half-century of service. We now get the Land of Lincoln Trophy, which replaced the tomahawk in terms of lameness – at least until this week.

For now, we local sports fans can get ourselves worked up into an athletic frenzy over the very notion of the BP Crosstown Cup.

The what?!???

I WISH I were kidding. But that is the new prize announced Monday that will be given to the Chicago professional baseball team that manages to win the most games in head-to-head competition each season.

In short, we’re talking about the City Series, the Crosstown Classic, the Sox versus Flubs, or whatever tag you use to describe those six games each year (out of 162 overall) when the Chicago White Sox take on the Chicago Cubs.

The Chicago Tribune used its website Monday to report about the creation of the cup, which supposedly will be a three-foot-tall trophy that will be given to the team that wins the most games each season. If, by chance, each team manages to win three games (which does happen quite often), then there will supposedly be tie-breaker factors meant to put one ballclub ahead of the other.

In short, we’re now going to get the sight of an official trophy presentation each year – even in years when both of Chicago’s ballclubs are managing to stink up the joint even moreso than the Union Stockyards ever did and there isn’t anything else to brag about.

THAT COULD VERY well be this season, since the White Sox who some think have a shot to contend for a division title and playoff spot were as of Monday the team with a record of 8-11. Shut up, Cubs fans. Your preferred ballclub was only one game better at 9-10.

Excuse me for thinking this is too gimicky to take seriously. The whole idea of a serious athletic rivalry is that it happens, and usually is long-lasting enough that it can span across generations.

Trying to jump-start it by creation of trophies or other nonsensical rhetoric is little more than absurd.

If anything, Sox/Cubs is one of those aspects of our Chicago society, tying in closely with the whole South Side versus North Side that does determine a lot of our cultural aspects (I have known people who consider themselves devoted Chicagoans who have never set foot south of Roosevelt Road or north of Fullerton Avenue (and then only to check out DePaul University as a possible college to attend, before determining the place to be too “North Side-ish” to consider).

EVEN IN THE cases of people living outside the respective ballclub’s “region,” it usually becomes a sign that a person wants to adopt some sort of sympathy with the other.

Northwest Siders rooting for the Sox are merely displaced South Siders, while Southwest Siders rooting for the Cubs are self-hating nitwits (just kidding, they’re merely lost, and deserve our sympathy for being so misguided).

This kind of thing can’t be bolstered with a “Cup,” which I’m sure will wind up becoming the subject of ridicule by fans of both ballclubs. Could that be the reason that the cup’s creation was announced without a mockup of what it could possibly look like?

Somebody knew that hard-core Sox fans would find something to mock about it, no matter what it looks like.

THESE ARE THE people, after all, who took to calling their favorite ballclub’s stadium, “The Cell” (as in prison) because they didn’t want to have to continually give reference to the corporate entity that back in 2003 bought the naming rights to the building – which, surprisingly, remains in business, so the structure at 35th Street and Bill Veeck Drive hasn’t gone through multi-corporate names during its two decades of existence.

Which is why I find it hilarious that even the new cup that supposedly will pay tribute to the winner of Sox/Cubs each year has a corporate name.

For the record, it is the one-time British Petroleum Co., whose green-and-yellow BP signs can be seen on non-discount gas stations throughout the Chicago area. So now, we can say that the best of Chicago baseball each year gives us gas.

Somehow, that seems all to appropriate – particularly for the South Side ballclub that some people are still holding out hope can turn things around and not be completely embarrassing (that’s what kind of thoughts a three-game sweep against Seattle will put in one’s head).

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: June 11-13 at Wrigley Field, and June 25-27 at U.S. Cellular Field. That is when too many baseball fans will be overserved, and when our city’s two century-plus ballclubs will act as though they are in some sort of collegiate rivalry.